


Lesson

by BubbaKnowlton



Series: Garak teaches his kids to stab people [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Injury, Kidfic, M/M, Post-Canon Cardassia, canon divergent - damar lives, implied past mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 05:10:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15599013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BubbaKnowlton/pseuds/BubbaKnowlton
Summary: Garak teaches his kids how to defend themselves with knives. Unfortunately, toddlers and weapons don't make a good mix, as their father learns.Damar tries to teach the children self-defense, but a poor choice of words results in him being injured.





	Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> wow, two fics within 24 hours,,  
> Parmak is long suffering in this fic because the kids absolutely shred each other all the time and Garak doesn't stop them no matter how many times Parmak tells him they're gonna die of blood loss or kill each other one day.

**Lesson**

After too much to drink of the vintage kanar Enabran Tain had kept in his cellar, Damar had a night’s length gap in his memory. What he did remember, though, was waking up to Kira prodding at him with a boot, telling him Mila wanted them to clean up after themselves, his head pounding with a hangover.

Then, Cardassia was freed, and he’d survived, somehow. Had woken up again, pain where he’d been shot.

Months later, a doctor with braided white hair had shown up at his door, Elim Garak right behind him, a sling wrapped around his torso, and Damar had realized what exactly happened in Tain’s cellar. A few hatchlings peaked out as the doctor argued with Garak, telling him to just admit it, before he had to drag some Doctor Bashir all the way out here to get him to stop being such a brat, and they’d reminded him so much of how his son had looked like as a newborn that they had to be his.

Ultimately, though, they were Garak’s children. Although they favored him in appearance, they were every bit as secretive and stubborn as their mother. Damar did what he could to be a proper father to them, but respected that Garak did not trust him, and preferred to live on his own with the hatchlings. They each had their own parts to play in this new Cardassia, and had to live separately to fulfill their duties.

“Yadik! Look what Adik has been teaching me to use!” It was a bit of a surprise to come over and find the oldest of the clutch showing him a knife. He noticed the boy was holding it properly too. “We’re learning how to kill people.”

He really _shouldn’t_ have been surprised, considering who their mother was, who their grandfather was, but it was still concerning to hear a child say that.

“No, Milar, Adik said to call it self-defense!” his sister, Ulana, corrected him, also holding a knife. It didn’t make it sound much better, really. She looked up at Damar and smiled sweetly. “Want to see what we’ve learned, Yadik?”

He nodded, and the two of them faced each other. They tucked the knives under their clothes, and got into position to fight. Like their holds, their forms were perfect. He wondered just how long Garak had been teaching them ‘self-defense.’ The clutch had only just turned six, and the youth were supposed to be focused on mind training, not combat.

While they started off in a military form, their fighting style was distinctly not military. It was winding around each other, feints and trying to catch the other off guard. Finally, Milar drew his knife and slashed at his sister, only for her to grab his arm before he could cut her across the face. Soon after that, Ulana drew her knife as well, and nearly managed to stab her brother in the shoulder.

In the back of his mind, he knew he should stop them and discourage them from actively trying to maim each other, but he decided not to intervene. Garak would only get mad at him if he tried to, and he doubted they would actually listen to him once he left. All a protest would do was make them practice more when he wasn’t around.

Milar giggled as his sister knocked the knife from his hand and pressed her blade against his throat. She pulled away and the two looked up at him, smiling. “That was very good.” Their eyes shone at the praise. “But only if your opponent is the same size as you. You’re too small to use those tricks on an adult.”

Instead of being disappointed, they just looked intrigued, eyes widening, brimming with curiosity. They stared up at him, and Ulana asked, “Can you teach us to fight an adult?”

It wasn’t a good idea to encourage them, but it was for their protection, and Garak would end up teaching them anyways. “Sure. Go get your siblings, we’ll make this a lesson.”

Milar darted off to get his sisters and brother, and within a minute he had a group of excited children gathered in front of him. The lesson started off simple, making sure they all had good holds on their weapons and understanding what parts of the adult body they could reach with said weapons. Since they were all roughly the same height, he just had Ulana reach with her knife to demonstrate. He had to grab her wrist to keep her from stabbing him when he told her to reach for his stomach.

Again, that voice of reason in the back of his mind pleaded with him to discourage this, but he couldn’t stop the lesson now. It would disappoint them, and Garak was likely to come out and continue it if he saw them stop. Although Damar couldn’t see the former spy anywhere, he was sure he was watching them from somewhere.

Once they could rattle off all the spots to aim for, he showed them how to stab each specific place. They picked up on it fast, and then he felt they were ready to move on to something else before they got bored.

“If you are ever attacked as a group, it would be best to knock down your attacker.” He had them tuck the knives away. “Try to knock me over. Use whatever tricks you can think of.”

In just under two minutes, he would deeply regret saying that.The five of them did their best to push him over, but were too small to do so without the element of surprise. They realized they could make him stumble if they weaved around him, making it hard to keep an eye on them. Ulana and Milar grabbed his arm and pulled, making him look towards them.

He caught a flash of light glinting off of metal, but wasn’t fast enough to grab his other son’s arm before the knife was impaled in his thigh. He cried out, and the other four pulled him down and climbed onto him. They smiled, triumphant, until one saw the blood. Milar turned to his brother. “Tolan! You hurt Yadik!” The girls looked as well.

Tolan clearly hadn’t thought he’d actually manage to stab him, and looked stricken. Damar doubted that any of them had ever wounded Garak during their lessons, and this was his first time really stabbing someone. Tolan gave a distressed chirp, a sound young children made to call for help. That only further upset his siblings.

Damar sat up. “Ulana, does your adik have a medkit?” She nodded. “This isn’t too bad a wound, I can fix it myself. Go get it.” He could at least bandage it up until he could go find Garak’s doctor friend.

“Okay!” She ran off to go get it. He silently hoped that she could get it without Garak following her back out. Damar didn’t want to see the smug look that would no doubt be on his face as soon as he knew what one of the children had accomplished. As Ulana vanished into the house, he focused on reassuring her siblings that he would be alright.

“I’ve been injured worse before, don’t worry.”

“I’m really sorry, Yadik...” Tolan was looking at the ground, eyes filled with tears. 

Grabbing his hand, Damar tugged him closer. “It’s alright. I did say to use whatever tricks you could think of. Stabbing me does fit that criteria.” He was grateful he hadn’t been stabbed someplace serious. It really wouldn’t have been good for the children to see their father dying in front of them. There was no way Garak would have been able to save him so far away from a medcenter, unless performing surgery was part of the Obsidian Order’s training. 

Tolan looked soothed by that, and sat down next to him. Damar put an arm around him. Milar tried to touch the knife, and Damar had to shoo him away. “Don’t touch that. If you ever get stabbed, don’t remove the knife.” After a moment, he added, “But if someone attacks you, remove it, so they’ll bleed faster.”

“Oh. Does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Does it hurt worse than a phaser?”

“It depends on what setting the phaser is on. High settings hurt more than this, if they don’t kill you instantly.”

“How many times have you been shot?”

“Milar, please.” The boy plopped down on the ground next to his sisters, and began drawing in the dirt. A nervous habit of theirs. Milar drew out the alphabet, and his sisters drew some sort of animal Damar didn’t recognize. Something from Earth, perhaps. Garak’s Federation doctor friend had sent the children multiple datarods with different Earth books.

A door closed, and Damar looked up to see that Garak was coming over, medkit in hand, Ulana by his side. The children lit up when they saw him. “Adik!”

Garak smirked, looking down at him. Damar scowled. “My, my... Which one of you took down Legate Damar?”

“Tolan did!” Milar was quick to supply.

“Excellent work, my dear.” Tolan beamed. Garak knelt down to look at the wound. “Next time, aim for a more sensitive place, Tolan. A stab to the thigh might have brought down your yadik, but it won’t deter a determined attacker.”

“I will!” Damar really hoped he wouldn’t have to.

Popping open the medkit, Garak asked him, “So, how did this injury come about?”

“A poor choice of words.”

Garak looked delighted at the answer, not holding back his amusement. “Oh?”

“They interpreted the lesson in a way I didn’t expect.”

“And the lesson being...?” Garak grabbed the knife and pulled it out. Damar hissed. The children looked worried, but relaxed as Garak tended to the wound.

“The lesson being to knock me over.”

Garak reached over to pat Tolan’s head. “A success, I see.” He did what he could with the limited supplies in the medkit, and then said, “Kelas is coming over for dinner. If you’d like to stay, I can tell him to bring a proper medkit.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow/talk to me on Tumblr: @oblio-k  
> suggest more dads for garak's kids to stab please lol


End file.
